Tuesday, December 23, 2008

There Will Be a Shakespearean Title

There Will Be Blood. Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Perf. Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul F. Tompkins, Paul Dano, and Randall Carver. 2007. DVD. Paramount, 2008.
Since it's proving desperately difficult to upload a video at present (after four hours, the two-minute clip I planned still hadn't uploaded), you'll have to be satisfied by these comments on a film that I have not seen.

However, it does have a Shakespeare allusion (though not a direct quotation, so it's not exactly titularly parasitic) in its title. There Will Be Blood seems to allude to this speech of Macbeth's from III.iv:

It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood.

Although I haven't seen the film, the themes do seem to be Shakespearean—Macbethean, to be more precise. Those who have seen it, let me know if the allusions run deeper than that!

And everyone can wait until after Christmas for the intended video clips. I'll store them up for later distribution!Links: The Film at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

2 comments:

I would definitely call it Shakespearean in spirit. While there's no Lady MacBeth and seemingly no guilt to rub out on the part of the protagonist, one could argue that he's a tragic hero, causing his own ruin as a human being, while achieving unparalleled success financially. It's worth a watch, definitely. One of the best films of recent years.

Bardfilmis normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilmis a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:

KJ is a professor of English and Literature at a small Christian liberal arts college. In addition to courses entitled “Shakespeare” and “Introduction to Shakespeare,” he teaches a course called “Shakespeare and Film.” Recently, he developed a course titled “Modern Shakespearean Fiction.” Shakespeare is also integrated into nearly all his other courses, including courses on the Literature of Food and the Literature of Humor. Additionally, he is the author of Bardfilm: The Shakespeare and Film Microblog. But you may have known that already.